University guide 2012: download the Guardian tables and see how the rankings have changed

Guardian University guide 2012: how the rankings have changed. Click image for full graphic

The latest Guardian University Guide tables show that Cambridge University has taken the top spot, breaking its arch-rival Oxford's six-year stint as the UK's leading institution.

Oxford has come second and St Andrews third, while the London Schoolof Economics has climbed four places from last year to take fourth place. University College London, Warwick, Lancaster, Durham, Loughborough and Imperial College make up the top 10.

The tables are based on data for full-time undergraduates at UK universities.

Universities with low rankings are almost as likely to be intending to charge maximum tuition fees of £9,000 in 2012 as those with high rankings, our analysis suggests.

London Metropolitan University, which comes bottom of the Guardian tables, intends to charge between £4,500 and £9,000 for its degrees from autumn 2012. Salford, Liverpool John Moores, Manchester Metropolitan and the University of East London – all of which rank in the bottom 20 of the Guardian tables – want to charge £9,000 for at least some of their courses.

From autumn 2012, universities in England will be allowed to charge up to £9,000 a year for undergraduate degrees. The government's access watchdog, the Office for Fair Access, is looking at the fees each university in England wants to charge and will announce in July whether it approves of institutions' plans.

We've also mashed in some data of our own, including the full planned tuition fees, drop-out rates and student numbers.

Here are some of the key numbers:

• 38 of the universities in the top 60 will charge the full £9,000 tuition fee in 2012 - and 18 of those in the bottom 60• The universities in the top 20 are bigger than those in the bottom 20 - with an average of 8,927 undergraduates, compared to 6,015• The student staff ratio of the universities in the top 20 is less than that in the bottom 20 - 14.2 students to every tutor, compared to 21.54

You can download the full data below (plus the banding boundaries, for those who want them) - what can you do with it?